Bog means god in Serbian

by Susan Richardson

For Bojana

She is the call of a raven,
sparrow bones,
a cello suite wrapped in the flames
of a punk rock refrain.
She went into war with sparks on
the tips of her fingers,
emerged with fire scarred into her voice.
Fury courses over her tongue,
through her pen,
uncontained onto the blank pages she attacks
with a torrent of passion and sorrow.
She is a step ahead in the darkness,
the pulse of a nation
roaring and blasting through the moon.
She is the loud mouth, the soothsayer, the compatriot.
Rage is the blood of her poetry,
bravery the backbone.
She is the sound of the ocean at midnight,
the clamor that shatters the dawn.
She is a chaos of wind that longs for rain,
a mind that swims untethered channels.
She is the wicked girl, the rebel poet,
the mother who softens at the sound of her son’s laughter.
She is the teacher and the disciple,
with a dagger in one hand, a valley of lilies in the other.
She is the veins that crave escape,
the eyes that refuse to look away.

About the Author

Susan Richardson is living, writing and going blind in Los Angeles. In addition to poetry, she writes a blog called, Stories from the Edge of Blindness. Her work has been published in Ink Sweat & Tears, Foxglove Journal, Amaryllis, The Writing Disorder, Eunoia Review, Rust + Moth, and Burning House Press, among others. She was awarded the Sheila – Na – Gig 2017 Winter Poetry Prize, featured in the Literary Juice Q&A Series, and chosen as the Ink Sweat & Tears March 2018 Poet of the Month.